Ever since marrying Ryan Reynolds and putting her Gossip Girl role of Serena van der Woodsen behind her, Blake Lively has been keeping a pretty low profile. And that's just the way she likes it.

"Having a personal life has been really nice," the 26-year-old actress says in the April issue of Elle magazine. "I'd been on Gossip Girl 10 months a year for six years, shooting 15-hour days, so I hadn't had time to just be since I graduated from high school."

She adds, "It's been nice to kind of settle into my own skin and work on things I really love."

Sure enough, after taking a yearlong break from acting, Lively is back to, well, acting.

The blond beauty is currently working on the upcoming film The Age of Adaline in Vancouver.

Directed by Lee Toland Krieger, who helmed Celeste and Jesse Forever, the movie follows "the miraculous life of the 29-year-old title character (portrayed by Lively), who stops aging after recovering from a near fatal accident. Over the 20th century she embarks on an epic but isolated worldwide journey, keeping her secret, until she meets a man who forever alters her life."